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LIPCHITZ: I will tell a story again because this will illustrate... A long time ago at the beginning when I was in this country, and I had my studio in the 23rd Street, which burned...a lady came to me on day with a lot of samples...with the sculptures made in plastic materials. She was sent by a kind of factory in order to have a written statement from me that this kind of plastics are good for sculpture..they even wanted to pay me for it. And I said to her, "Madam, but I'm not concerned with materials." So she said, "But you're a sculptor. How is it that you are not concerned with materials?" So a idea came to me--you see, idea how to answer her. So I said, "Let me tell you a story--which I imagine, right now. I said, "Suppose the old Rembrandt is walking on the street, he was was very lonely, closed in his soul, and suddenly somebody said to him, 'Hello, Rembrandt, how are you?' And it was a old friend of his, and they started a conversation--and 'what is there? What are you doing now?' And Rembrandt said, 'Well, I'm--' he wants to look for paper, make a drawing to show to his friend what he is doing, he doesn't have a piece of paper, so he was front of a wall, a white wall, he puts his finger in the gutter--and you ought to know what at that time the gutter was--and make on the wall a drawing to explain to his friend what he does." So I said to her, "You see, his dirt becomes pure gold." How you can imagine somebody who puts his finger in fluid gold and makes a drawing and it becomes pure dirt. So I said, "The material is the man, the dirt."
 
STUDENT: What I meant was, why do you like to work in clay rather than carving in stone?

LIPCHITZ: Well, that's a different story again. I was a carver. I